


The Hand We're Dealt

by DragonDracarys



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Ambiguous!Inquisitor, Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Coping, Denial, Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - Here Lies the Abyss, Dragon Age: Inquisition Spoilers, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hawke left in the Fade, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - Here Lies the Abyss, Sad, Skyhold, Somebody save Varric Tethras, Varric Tethras deserves the world, Varric Tethras is a Good Friend, minor alcohol abuse, post-Adamant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-13 18:08:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21498310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonDracarys/pseuds/DragonDracarys
Summary: “Would you believe me if I told you that wasn’t the first time she was abandoned in the Fade?”“At this point, Varric, I’d believe you if you said Orlesians shit gold.”“Well, they do. It’s in half their food, but that’s beside the point.”Takes place after Here Lies the Abyss with Hawke left in the Fade. Varric's strongest coping mechanism is telling stories and the Inquisitor is more than happy to listen to him. After all, they were the one who decided to leave Hawke behind.(Working title: "If there's one thing I know, it's that Hawke doesn't scare easy.")
Relationships: Fenris/Female Hawke
Kudos: 16





	The Hand We're Dealt

The Inquisitor could see the exact moment Varric Thethras’ heart shattered. They saw the second when he realized that his fears had come to pass and the pain in his eyes when Varric realized his friend wasn’t coming back.

“Where’s Hawke?” Varric had asked, words heavy with anxiety. Stroud had averted his gaze guiltily and refused to meet Varric’s eyes. “Where’s Hawke?!” He'd demanded of the Inquisitor upon receiving no answer, panic edging into his voice.

“Hawke gave her life to save us and strike a decisive blow against Corypheus,” The Inquisitor had said to the keep at large, the Wardens and the soldiers gathered beneath. But even as the words left their mouth, The Inquisitor could hear how hollow they sounded, even in their own ears. They were not the words one friend would say to console another, not structured to bring comfort. It was for show, presenting a brave face to a war-torn group of survivors looking to their leader for guidance. It was enough for most, but not all, and the Inquisitor saw Varric’s face flicker through emotions, faster than he himself could process them.

Denial. Anger. Rage. Desperation. Loss.

“Well…” Varric said quietly, the lack of his usual levity stark in everyone’s ears. He shook his head to clear it, to try and banish the awful reality. To try and wake up from the nightmare he was seemingly still trapped in, as if he’d never escaped the realm of the fear demon.

Cassandra took a step towards him, her voice wavering between sympathy and disbelief, “Varric, I’m…” Varric brushed her off. 

For perhaps half a heartbeat, he glanced accusingly at the Inquisitor, then turned and strode from the keep, the sound of his rapid steps echoing over the silent crowd. 

The Inquisitor watched him go. 

~*~*~*~

The steps leading up to Skyhold’s keep had never felt so short; the Inquisitor thought that was probably due to their desire to be anywhere but at the top of the stairs. The enormous wooden doors to the keep were cracked, but they hesitated on the threshold, gathering the courage to step inside. Deep breaths of frigid, mountain air threatened to set teeth chattering, and as they looked skyward, the blanket of stars above stared coldly back at them. Judgement, it felt like, the flickering points of light readying to declare a guilty verdict. And yet there was no point in putting it off, and a deep sigh accompanied The Inquisitor through the doors into the blackened banquet hall.

The flames in the hearth crackled, lighting the silent hall and casting flickering shadows across the sturdy, stone walls. The source of their anxiety was sitting in front of the fire, head in one hand and a bottle in the other. The aura of desolation was palpable, even from a distance.

“Care for a drink?” Varric asked somewhat bitterly as the Inquisitor approached, with a rasp in his voice reminiscent of crushed gravel. He gestured without turning to look at the multitude of empty bottles piled on the worn, wooden table behind his armchair. A few were lying on their side, the contents spilled across parchment littered with dozens of crossed out lines, as if, for once, Varric had been at a loss for words. The Inquisitor knew who those words were for, despite the bleeding ink melding the letters together, and the raw guilt threatened to swallow them whole. After all, if Varric Tethras, couldn’t find the words to tell Hawke’s loved ones, to break the news to them, nobody could.

“Thanks,” the Inquisitor mumbled, helping themselves to some kind of liquor from the table. The smell was eye-watering and promised a high alcohol content: exactly what one needed after falling ass-first into the Fade and back out again. It was decided the tankard was best filled to the brim, leaving no empty space where doubts could gather to plot.

The dining hall was empty, save the two of them. All the servants and nobles usually seen crowding the keep during the day had long since turned in for the night. The Inquisitor sat in the other armchair, eyes staring at the dancing fire without truly seeing it. A long sigh, heavy with stress escaped their lips as they sank into a slouch, as if the weight of the world was pressing them downward. They were both silent for a time, neither giving voice to the tumult inside their minds, letting the fire and the strong drinks in their glasses speak for them.

It was Varric who broke the quiet first.

“She was never scared, you know. She-“ he choked on his grief, cleared his throat and started again, slowly at first, then falling into his tried and true story-telling rhythm.

“I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen Hawke scared. Whether it’s staring down templars or demons or dragons, Hawke has this… shit-eating grin she wears that just makes everyone think she’s got it all figured out. “

The Inquisitor didn’t mention the use of the present tense.

“This shit-eating grin has gotten her out of more than a few scrapes and it made her rich the first few times we played Wicked Grace. That didn’t last, of course, I was quick to learn her tells. Good thing too; a few more games like that and I’d’ve had to write another book just to pay the bills.”

He chuckled, but it was strained, forced through a raw throat.

“I remember the first time I saw Hawke truly scared was when my bastard brother locked us in this ancient, abandoned thaig in the ass end of the Deep Roads. He had it in his head that if Hawke and I died, the location of the thaig would die with us, allowing him to ransack it’s riches and keep them for himself without having to pay out our share.” He said through clenched teeth.

“That son of a nug-humping bitch… sorry mother. Anyway, we’d just found this creepy idol at the top of a dais in a massive room. The whole thing was empty except for this pedestal with the idol on it, so we could tell it had to be valuable, or at the very least important. We knew the idol was weird, but at that point we didn’t know how bad it really was. Turns out it was made of pure red lyrium. That was the first time any of us, or maybe anybody period, had seen the shit. I don’t know if Bartrand had been plotting our doom before he touched the thing, or if it drove him mad as soon as he held it in his hands, maybe it was a combination of the two. Either way, he strolled back through the door, idol in hand, pulling it shut behind him and locking us in the altar room.

“We ran after him, pounding on the door, shouting that it had closed behind him and trying to open it. When we figured out that there was there no way to open it from our side, and that Bartrand _ knew _ we were trapped and was leaving us to die intentionally…shit, I’ll never forget the look on Hawke’s face.

He groaned and rubbed his face with the hand not clenched tight around the bottle.

“She’s claustrophobic, you know. Shit, I am too, when it comes to the Deep Roads, but she’s got it _ bad. _ I mean really bad. I could see she was trying to keep it together, probably for Carver’s sake; old habits die hard, I guess. She was shaking, white as a sheet when it sunk in that we were trapped hundreds of feet below the surface with no way out. That room was massive, but at that point it wasn’t about being trapped in close-quarters, or even the millions of tons of rock separating us from the sun. It was this awful _ helplessness _ that started eating away at her. I could see it in her eyes; this trapped animal in her head, twisting and snapping and trying to get free.”

Varric shuddered, as if just the memory of Hawke’s terror was enough to get his own blood racing in sympathetic panic.

“What happened next?”

“Well, after a few seconds, Hawke had it under control again, she’s tough like that, and we did the only thing we could do; we looked for another way out. We were lucky, looking back, that there _ was _ a way out of that thaig. Shit, I don’t want to think about what would have happened if that room had been a dead end. Of course, we didn’t know at the time if it was an exit, or if we were just digging ourselves deeper into the bullshit. The Deep Roads are a maze, most of them crumbling, half of them collapsed, so it was entirely possible that our ‘way out’ would only lead us deeper underground. Luckily, the route we followed led us all the way back up to the surface, but not before we fought half the darkspawn in the Deep Roads. Ever heard of a stone golem? I don’t know if you know this, but crossbow bolts do to stone what Vivienne’s lectures on manners do to Sera.

“Bounce off and do absolutely no good?”

“Exactly. Imagine fighting the mother of all stone golems after it’s been infected with red lyrium and all you’ve got is a few crossbow bolts, 3 tired humans and a dog.”

“Hawke brought her _ dog _ with her into the Deep Roads?”

“She’s Ferelden.”

“Right, continue.”

“Well after we killed the giant, lyrium-possessed rock-monster, we headed for what we hoped was the surface. It was another five days before we saw anything even remotely familiar, and those five days were filled with the smell of wet dog and Carver’s moaning.”

“Sounds like you had a _ great _time.”

“Oh yeah. We traveled in the lap of luxury.”

They were both quiet for a moment.

“That isn’t the end of the story, is it?”

Varric hesitated before answering the Inquisitor’s question with one of his own.

“You know Hawke’s little brother is a Grey Warden, right?”

“I’ve heard you mention it once or twice.”

“Yeah, well, that wasn’t by choice.

“We were wandering around in the Deep Roads, slicing our way through enough darkspawn to earn honorary Grey Warden status when Carver, Hawke’s brother, starts stumbling. At first, we all thought it was just exhaustion. We'd been wandering, constantly fighting with no real amount of food or sleep for days. By then all of us were dead on our feet, tripping over every other rock and too exhausted to even curse about it anymore.

“But then Carver asked to make camp and we knew something was off. Junior was always so determined to keep up with Hawke, prove that he could do everything she could, even if he was way out of his depth. Andraste’s crispy ass, that kid had a chip on his shoulder the size of Kirkwall. I half hoped that maybe it was just the deep mushrooms we’d been eating. See, those things are poisonous because of the corruption; you have to be very careful about which ones you pick, which parts you eat and even how you eat them. What a pain in the ass that was.

“But then we stopped to take a closer look, and we realized it was blight sickness. Hawke and Junior were both all too friendly with the shit after they fled Ferelden, so they recognized it almost immediately. Anders, yes, _ that _ Anders, confirmed it. Grey Wardens, from what I understand, can basically smell the taint and Blondie used to be one of them; he said he could sense it in Carver. We’d all taken hits from darkspawn, and even though Anders had patched us up as soon as he could, I guess the taint had already taken hold. We were still days from the surface; there was no way we could make it in time, and no place to go if we did. Carver was dying and we all knew it.”

“So how did he survive?”

Varric was in his stride now, at home in his story-telling, some of the grief fading from his voice.

“Well as it turns out, Blondie stole maps to the Deep Roads from some Grey Wardens he thought might be looking for him. He knew that somewhere in that hellscape of lava and darkspawn, a group of Wardens were camping out. He suggested we take the kid to them, ask them to recruit him. The only known way to live after being infected is to become a Grey Warden, and even that’s no guarantee, as the Wardens told us after we found them. That was the first time Hawke and I met Stroud. There wasn’t a lot of time for introductions, and Stroud just told us that, and I’m paraphrasing here, ‘Being a Warden is nug-shit and the kid would probably be better off dead.’ But Hawke didn’t buy that, of course. So, Stroud finally gave in and took Junior off to the surface to turn him into a Warden, but not before mentioning Hawke might never see him again. What a pleasant way to end a conversation.” He muttered the last line sarcastically.

“So, Hawke didn’t even know if Carver was dead or alive? For how long?”

“Years. It wasn’t until we happened to cross paths with his group of Wardens during the Qunari invasion that Hawke saw her brother again. He was the same old Carver in ways, but different in others. Still an utter shit, but more mature too. I think joining the Wardens was good for him.”

Varric trailed off, and silence settled around them again. Sensing the descent of the desolation that had been hovering above them, kept at bay by Varric’s memories, the Inquisitor cast about internally for something, anything to say to keep him talking.

“What were the other times?”

“What-?” Varric started to ask.

The Inquisitor flinched at their clumsy transition, berating themselves for the poor choice of topic.

“The other times you’ve seen Hawke scared,” they finished, wishing they’d asked about anything other than Hawke. Although, the Inquisitor thought, it seemed all Varric’s stories revolved around his time with the Champion of Kirkwall, as if all the noteworthy occasions in his life featured the witty Ferelden.

_ That shouldn’t be surprising _ , the Inquisitor mused, _ considering Varric’s made no secret of the fact that Hawke is- _ ** _was_ ** _ his best friend _.

This thought brought their conscious rearing to the surface and sent shame spiraling through them again.

But Varric didn’t seem to notice the awkwardness and instead sifted through his memories with another long pull of his drink.

“Well, like I said, there weren’t many. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that Hawke doesn’t scare easy. I don’t know if it’s because she was raised like that, or because she had to look after the twins, or if it’s just because she’s been through so much _ shit _, but that woman has nerves of tempered steel.”

Although the Inquisitor knew of the Champion’s deeds and everything she’d done for the city of Kirkwall, hearing Varric speak so highly of her bolstered the admiration they felt for Hawke as nothing else had. It was as if he was just as incredulous about her actions as the rest of Thedas, despite seeing them first-hand. The world had truly lost a hero at Adamant, thanks in no small part to the Inquisitor. It was, after all, their decision.

But as Varric began to speak again, The Inquisitor reminded themselves that this time was not for introspection. This time was for a friend, lost in grief, who had every reason to hate them.

“Well, there was the time we traveled to Sundermount. It’s that big mountain outside Kirkwall, in the Vinmarks. I don’t know if you’ve ever been, but it’s got a nasty reputation for a reason. Some guy in the city had asked Hawke to fetch him something from the peak of the mountain. Of course he did, right? Well no, turns out the bastard was aiming to fill a bounty on Hawke’s head, probably put there by one of the dozens of people she pissed off on a daily basis. Turns out trying to be a good person earns you a lot of enemies.”

The Inquisitor rolled their eyes and nodded in perfect understanding.

“It was just supposed to be a quick trip up the mountain, so we expected giant spiders, small dragons, and your average deranged blood-mage or two. That’s not what we got.

“I’d just finished telling Fenris the best way to disarm a snare, when from out of nowhere, a dozen massive brutes in plate armor charged us. They’d been hiding in some bushes off the side of the trail, poorly, might I add. If I’d been paying more attention to where we were going, I would have seen them a hundred yards away; the sunlight bouncing off their armor was blinding.

“As it was, we were caught off guard, definitely not prepared for a huge group of stabby assholes and a handful of guys in skirts to start throwing fireballs at us. Fenris was our only frontline in that fight. Hawke, Blondie and I were taking pot shots at them from a distance, trying to keep the mages from turning Broody into a crisp. Now, Fenris is a good fighter, not somebody I want to be on the wrong side of, that’s for sure, but even he can’t handle 12 fully armored maniacs at one time. He was doing his whole glowing bit and-“

“Wait, glowing what now?” The Inquisitor interrupted, realizing too late that interrupting Varric Tethras in the middle of telling a story was grounds for immediate termination of said story. But, of course, Varric took it in stride.

“Ah, yeah, I forgot you don’t know Broody. Fenris was a slave growing up in Tevinter. Elves and Tevinter, you know. Anyway, the sick bastard who “owned” him branded lyrium into his skin, made him into some kind of walking energy vessel. I guess he would have Fenris follow him around and order him to activate the brands whenever he was low on magic, like a lyrium potion that you don’t have to drink in the middle of combat. It’s a pretty neat trick, if you’re the type of soulless bastard that doesn’t mind torture and slavery. Anyway, Fenris could activate these tattoos of his at will, which made the lyrium in his skin glow like mad. This had the double-edged result of him becoming a giant target for anybody near him with a sword. He drew a lot of attention during fights, but, thankfully, kept most enemies off of Hawke and me.”

“He had lyrium _ branded _ into his skin?! What kind of horrible- what kind of _ monster _-“ The Inquisitor stammered, aghast at the idea of such an act. “How could they do such a thing? Wouldn’t that be terribly painful?”

“Yes, it would.” Varric assented, “He didn’t talk about the marks often, I suppose they were probably a constant reminder of the shit past he’d escaped, but Hawke mentioned once that the tattoos on his skin caused him constant pain, especially when he used them.”

“That sounds like something right out of a nightmare.”

Varric nodded before continuing his story.

“So Broody’s out there in the middle of the fray, Hawke and Anders were casting so many healing spells on him he looked like he was on fire. Then again,” he added, “he might have actually _ been _ on fire. Those casters were pretty intent on roasting the poor elf. Maybe they were hungry...”

“Cannibals?”

“Tevinter.”

“Ah.”

“Well, eventually, both Hawke and Blondie start running out of magic trying to keep Fenris up and we’ve only taken down half of them. Fenris starts falling back, trying to put some distance between himself and the guys with swords, but they keep coming at him, dashing behind him and trying to hamstring him so he can’t run. One of the guys gets his sword around Fenris’ guard and slits a massive gash right in the middle of his gut. Hawke lets out this horrible scream and starts to run toward him, but Anders and I grab her, hold her back. Somehow Fenris is still on his feet, but he’s bleeding badly, and slowing down. He’s cutting up with this huge blade that probably weighed as much as he did, bringing it down on the guy who cut him, taking a few limbs with him, but his buddy takes the opportunity to dash in and stab his sword down into Fenris’ thigh, all the way to the bone.”

The Inquisitor was on the edge of their seat, gripped by the tale Varric spun in the air between them, breath bated as they listened for the outcome of the fight.

“Fenris yells, falls to one knee. There’s still six guys in armor and three mages throwing everything they’ve got at him, fireballs and ice spikes and boulders in the shape of fists. I’m firing bolts as fast as I can squeeze Bianca’s trigger, but that armor was high quality, and they weren’t going down fast enough. It looked bad.

“Fenris is down on one knee, six swords and a shower of ice spikes bearing down on him when Hawke whirls on Blondie and yells ‘Dragonfire! Now!’”

Seeing the confused look on the Inquisitors face, Varric held up a hand, staving off the question on the tip of their tongue, as if expecting it.

“Turns out ‘Dragonfire’ was a code they came up with as a last-ditch plan for when shit was really and truly fucked. Essentially, as I came to understand it, it meant ‘I’m about to spend every last drop of magic I’ve got left to turn this place into a hole in the ground,’ so when Hawke yelled ‘Dragonfire’, Anders used the last of his energy to throw a barrier up around Fenris. And Hawke? Andraste’s flaming tits…

“Hawke unleashed hell. She let out this deranged scream that bounced off the rocks and echoed off the mountain, so it came back at us from every direction. It seemed like the sky turned red; enormous meteors of flaming rubble slammed into the ground, turning the path into a crater. Wind whipped the air into a firestorm, turning everything in the general vicinity to ash, obscuring the entire area with smoke. The place looked like a warzone. Shit was burning, everything that wasn’t already dead was actively in the process of dying.” Varric shook his head as if his own memory was too outlandish to believe. “That was the only time I’ve ever seen Hawke use that spell. I don’t even know what it’s called, to be honest with you. I’ve just taken to calling it “Dragonfire” because frankly that’s the only thing I can think to compare it to.”

“What happened to Fenris?” The Inquisitor demanded, voice laced with desperate curiosity.

“When the smoke cleared and everybody stopped coughing their lungs out, Hawke, Anders and I all scrambled into the hole in the ground where we last saw Fenris. Well I say scrambled, but Hawke basically crawled; I think that spell took everything out of her. She wasn’t able to cast right for days after that. Well, in the middle of this zone of destruction, surrounded by flaming corpses and plate armor that was still glowing red hot from the fire, was Fenris. The force field Anders had thrown on him was flickering and went out as soon as Anders stumbled into the crater. Hawke crawled over to Broody and rolled him onto his back. The pool of blood underneath him was still growing, so we knew his heart was beating, at least, but he had already lost a ton of blood. Hawke’s eyes were streaming, I think both from the smoke and the fear of losing Fenris. They were all blood-shot and there were lines on her cheeks where they cut through the soot on her face. But her eyes themselves looked hollow, like the terror had emptied her out; like it was already over; like Fenris was already dead.

“Neither Blondie or Hawke had a drop of magic left to heal Fenris, and I think he would have needed quite a lot of it to even stabilize. We had a few potions, and Hawke was going to try to pour one down his throat, but Anders said she would drown him trying to do that. They were arguing about it, Hawke in a panic and Anders on the verge of losing it, when some Dalish elves from the mountain encampment charged up to the scene.

“Their keeper, Marethari, tried asking them something along the lines of ‘_ why the hell did you blow up our mountain’ _, but Hawke wouldn’t answer her, just demanded she heal Fenris immediately, calling in every favor she had with the clan from the past however many years she’d been helping them. Marethari took one look at Fenris and shook her head, like she was going to refuse, like he was too far gone and not worth the magic, but Hawke snarled at her. Full on snarled like a lunatic or a rabid dog. It was horrible, I’d never seen her do anything like that. I thought the Keeper was going to tell her to stuff it, but instead she crouched over Fenris, lay two fingers on his forehead and spoke something in Elvish.

“This glowing, white light sprouted from his forehead and lit up his tattoos like he’d activated them. A few seconds later, Fenris started coughing, hacking up huge clots of blood. After he took a few moments to recover, he sat up, looked around him and said, ‘_ Fasta vaas, people really hate you, Hawke _.’ like it was all the explanation he needed for why it looked like several dragons had taken particular offense to that specific part of the mountainside.”

Varric laughed heartily, and this time it wasn’t forced, if just a touch wistful.

“It’s lucky the Dalish were there to heal him.” The Inquisitor breathed, trying to recover from the emotional riptide of the touch and go story.

“Yeah, well, after that, anytime Hawke showed her face around their camp, the elves would all flinch, like they thought she was going to finish blowing up their mountain. Nobody ever stopped her from going anywhere outright, but you could tell they were less than pleased and had to mentally resign themselves to finding a new mountain every time Hawke and company rolled through. The first time it happened was one of the only times I heard Fenris laugh in public, and he would get this smug smirk on his face every time it happened after that.”

“He sounds a bit like a broody Cullen.” The Inquisitor said wryly.

“However broody you’re imagining him to be, multiply it by ten. If brooding were a competition, Fenris would take gold in every single match.”

“What a cheery fellow.”

Varric grinned.

“You have no idea, Inquisitor.” Varric chuckled again and raised his free hand to rub the back of his neck. The Inquisitor could have sworn this time he sounded _ sheepish _. They raised an eyebrow at Varric, probing without words for the story he was clearly on the brink of telling.

“I uh… tried to warn Hawke away from him, at first.” He said, “Thought he was no good for her. In my defense, I had only her best interests at heart, and didn’t know Fenris well at the time. Don’t tell her I told you this, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.” He deliberated for a second. “They were both emotional wrecks, Hawke having lost her entire family and Fenris with the slave thing… those two had enough emotional baggage to sink a fleet of merchant ships to the bottom of the Boeric. But after they finally worked through all their shit, they made it into something great. Frankly, thank the Maker for that, I couldn’t take much more of the mutual pining and longing glances.” He held up three fingers, looking from the fire into the Inquisitors eyes as he said “Three years. They made eyes at each other for three damned _ years _ before they finally gave it up. It was torture to endure, but great for writing.” He admitted.

“For a while there I thought they were never going to kiss and make up, they’re both so stubborn. After Hawke’s mother died, they were friendlier, but they still danced around each other like they were afraid of getting burned. It was almost painful to watch.”

The Inquisitor paused, wavering on whether or not to ask the question, but plowed on, determined to keep their friend talking as long as possible.

“How did Hawke’s mother die?”

A shadow passed over Varric’s face and he drained his glass, the dregs of whatever had been in the tankard pooling at the bottom. He stood, the drink making him unsteady on his feet, and shambled behind their chairs to retrieve more alcohol.

“That,” he said, pouring himself another tall drink, “is a shitty story.”

“Oh…” said the Inquisitor, unsure of how to respond to Varric Tethras refusing to tell a story.

“It’s not shitty because it’s a bad story, what happened was shitty.” Varric elaborated, teetering back to his seat, flopping into the chair, but managing not to spill a drop from the brimming glass.

As he gathered the threads of the memory in his mind, the Inquisitor watched his expression, trying not to make it obvious. The laugh lines around his eyes were lax, his mouth a grim slash, and the haunted look in his eyes leant the Inquisitor a deep feeling of foreboding. Varric wasn’t lying, this was not a pleasant story.

“A few years before this all happened, Hawke had been looking into the disappearances of some women from Kirkwall. A Templar had been investigating but wasn’t getting any help from the city guard because they believed there was no proof the disappearances were linked. The only clue the Templar had that they weren’t just a string of coincidences was that they had all received white lilies from a suitor before they had vanished. We looked into it and found that a blood mage was involved, but the trail went cold. A couple of years and a few more abductions later we end up back on the trail again, and just when we think we find the killer, a blood mage that had kidnapped a girl, he turns out to be innocent. Just like that we were out of leads again. We reasoned that at least this time the city guard were paying attention and maybe they could do their jobs for once and catch the guy. None of us believed they would, but hell, people can dream, right?

“Well, that night we’re dropping Hawke off at home, thinking of playing a few rounds of cards before we turned in for the night. But as we walk through the door, Hawke’s skeevy uncle is waiting for us, says he’s been waiting for Hawke’s mother all day because she never showed for their ‘weekly chat.’ According to Bodahn, a merchant who lived in the Hawke estate, she’d been out with her ‘suitor’ all night and hadn’t been back.

“That was slightly concerning, Hawke said Leandra was never one to go out without leaving some kind of note and she’d never mentioned any suitor, but initially there was no need for panic. At least, not until Hawke noticed the flowers. _ White lilies _from her suitor, Bodahn said.”

The Inquisitor felt the blood in their veins run cold and they unconsciously moved closer to the fire.

“Gamlen went to look for her in Lowtown, while we went to find the initial suspect, thinking he might have an idea of where she’d gone, as he himself had also apparently been hunting the killer. It spoke to the desperation of the situation that Hawke accepted when he offered to perform a blood-magic ritual to find her mother. She always hated blood magic, but I guess this was one exception she was willing to make. After all, her mother was the only family she had left at the time.

“The trail led us straight to this dark, underground foundry. The same one we’d found the remains of the other missing women years earlier. Turns out we hadn’t needed the magic ritual anyway: pools of blood led us right to the foundry steps, congealing in the dirt of Lowtown’s streets. At this point, every single one of us was scared shitless at what we were going to find inside. It was the middle of the night in Lowtown. That’s usually enough to unnerve even veteran Kirkwall residents. But add in the blood and the fact that a dozen women had disappeared under the same calling card as Hawke’s mother? Nobody was fully in control of their fear. Even Hawke looked a little nervous at times. Well, when she wasn’t foaming at the mouth in rage that somebody had taken her mother.”

The Inquisitor let out a short, nervous chuckle that didn’t reach their eyes and Varric seemed of the same mindset. This was not a story that incited genuine laughter. The setting alone had the Inquisitor glancing over their shoulder warily, despite being in what was arguably the safest place in Thedas.

“We took down some shades, demons, skeletons. None of which did anything to reassure us that Leandra was just on a nice date with a friendly guy from Hightown. We found bodies of women, some missing limbs. We found notes describing the preservation of human tissue. We found Leandra’s locket, half buried in the dirt, carelessly dropped and left there. I remember chills crawling up my spine, feeling like I was being watched and the whole place stank of fear.

“But then…” Varric shuddered, haunted by his memories, “we found a shrine, lilies and love notes and an enormous painting of somebody who looked eerily similar to Hawke’s mother. We’d already known from the second we walked through the door that there would be nothing good at the end of the line. Every step solidified that knowledge.”

Varric stared into the fire, eyes darkened and unfocused.

“The guy who’d taken Hawke’s mother wasn’t your average garden variety psychopath. He was a special kind of crazy. Broken, like he was possessed. I guess his wife had died years earlier and he’d been… recreating her with body parts he’d harvested from women around Kirkwall. Some arms from one lady, hands from another, fingers from somebody else. He’d stitched them all together like a doll, preserving the corpse with blood magic and alchemy. Real creepy shit. The diary he kept said he just needed one more piece, and that he’d know it when he saw it. That he’d recognize his wife’s face anywhere. That’s where Leandra entered the mix.”

The Inquisitor, eyes wide with horror, realized their mouth was slack, jaw hanging open and their fingers were digging into the meat of their palms, bleaching the knuckles white. They struggled to get a grip on themselves, trying to shake off the creeping dread.

“Leandra looked like the guy’s wife. So, he’d seduced her, lured her into the foundry, and…” Varric faltered, couldn’t bring himself to say the words, “He finished his creation using Leandra’s head. Stuffed her into a wedding dress, put a veil in her hair like she was his beautiful new bride. I was too busy staring at the thing that had been Hawke’s mother that I didn’t catch Hawke’s expression, and I’m thankful for that every day of my life.

“We killed the blood-mage, found out later his name was Quentin. We killed him and all his demons and at the end of it, Leandra, or what was left of her, stumbled into Hawke’s arms.” Varric bowed his head, eyes obscured by a furrowed brow. “There was nothing anybody could do, the blood-magic had been keeping her alive. Before she passed, she said she knew Hawke would come. That she was at peace with dying, because she’d see Hawke’s father again, and her sister, Bethany. She was proud of how strong her daughter had become.” Varric took a deep breath.

“The last thing Leandra said to Hawke was that she only had one regret, and it was that she was leaving Hawke alone.” He paused for a beat to gather himself. “She died down there, in that dungeon. She must have been in so much pain, but Hawke held her the whole time.

“She never let go, I think, not really.”

The Inquisitor swallowed past the lump in their throat, sorry they ever asked about the story of Leandra’s death.

“Told you it was a shitty story.” Varric said, drinking heavily from his glass.

“And I thought _ I _ had bad luck.”

“You do.” Varric replied, “Both you and Hawke have the shittiest luck of anyone I’ve ever met. Hawke lost her home to the blight, watched most of her family die in front of her, and unknowingly assisted a vengeful mage, a man she considered one of her closest friends, murder hundreds of innocent people and start a civil war.”

“And,” the Inquisitor added bitterly, “was abandoned in the Fade.”

“Would you believe me if I told you that wasn’t the first time she was abandoned in the Fade?”

“At this point, Varric, I’d believe you if you said Orlesians shit gold.”

“Well, they do. It’s in half their food, but that’s beside the point.” He sighed, “Look, Inquisitor, I know you blame yourself for the way things happened at Adamant. And I know you think I blame you for it too.”

“Am I that obvious?”

“No, just painfully relatable.” Varric said evenly. “Hawke would never have been content to leave somebody else behind while she escaped. She wouldn’t have thanked you for saving her while somebody else suffered.” He stopped and looked into his glass, pondering life’s mysteries in the depths of the dark liquid.

“I wanted to hate you,” he admitted, quietly, “I wanted to blame somebody for all this shit that’s happened, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even be angry at you for longer than a few minutes. I don’t hold a grudge well, even for somebody who deserves it. My own brother tried to kill me and after all of it I just ended up pitying him.”

The Inquisitor didn’t answer, waited with a lump in their throat while they listened to Varric deliver their judgement.

“Hawke may have had colossally shitty luck, Inquisitor, but so do you. You didn’t ask for any of this, just as Hawke didn’t. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time and the world has done nothing but hate you for it. You alone survived the Conclave through sheer luck. You were hated, accused of destroying the Temple of Sacred Ashes and murdering the Divine. Some even went so far as to blame you for the mages and templars fighting. You tried to help despite that. When you needed their support, the Chantry shunned you, called you a liar, a heretic. You closed the Breach anyway. If that wasn’t enough, you survived Haven, staying behind to hold Corypheus off long enough for the rest of us to escape. You were willing to sacrifice your life to makes sure total strangers lived to see another day. And then they wanted you to lead the damn Inquisition. Any sane person would have told them to eat shit and gone off to live out their days with people who cared about them as a person instead of because they were ‘the Herald’. But no, you had to do what’s right.”

Varric turned the full weight of his gaze on the Inquisitor then, eyes boring into theirs, determined to get his point across.

“If it had been Hawke who’d had the Anchor, and you’d just been along for the ride, would you have let anybody else sacrifice their life so you could escape?”

The Inquisitor didn’t have to consider long.

“No, I wouldn’t.” they said, trying not to let their voice crack.

Varric continued, his words heavy as stone and weighted with sincerity.

“The truth is, Inquisitor, nobody knows what the hell they’re doing. We’re all just making it up as we go along. You look at the person in charge. You look at everybody in power and think ‘well they must know something I don’t, otherwise they wouldn’t be where they are, right?’ _ Wrong. _

“You think the Seeker knew what she was doing when she dragged me across Thedas to tell Hawke’s story to the Divine? She didn’t. You think Dorian knew what he was doing when he met you in Redcliffe to try and stop that Tevinter asshole from blowing up the world? He didn’t. You think Iron Bull, Blackwall or Sera knew what they were doing when they signed on to follow you into hell and back? _ They didn’t. _

“The people, _ your _ people, don’t follow you because they think you’re some special, chosen one. Maybe they did initially, but faith can only get you so far. They don’t follow you for power, or money or fear. Power weakens, money runs dry, fear is eventually overcome. No, Inquisitor.” Varric shook his head and pointed his finger at the Inquisitor’s chest. “They follow you for your heart. They follow you because you’re doing the right thing, even when it’s not easy. They follow you because somebody has to make the hard decisions. They follow you because even though nobody knows their ass from a hole in the ground in this fucked up world, they know you’re doing what you believe to be right.”

The Inquisitor clenched their jaw as emotion threatened to overwhelm them.

“This world is a shit show, nobody has the answers, not the Seeker, not me, and not you. We’re all just playing the game with the hand we’re dealt. So no, Inquisitor. I don’t blame you for what happened at Adamant. I don’t blame you for Hawke. I don’t blame the Seeker. I don’t blame the mages or the Templars. I think the Maker has a shitty sense of humor, but I don’t blame Him either. When you're playing cards, you don’t blame the person at your side who picked up the card you needed for your hand, you don’t blame the dealer for giving you shitty cards, and you shouldn’t blame _ yourself _ for not playing smarter at the end of the game.

“Sometimes, there’s nobody to blame. Sometimes, Inquisitor, the cards are just shitty.”

**Author's Note:**

> Why can I only write angst? Am I broken? Is this a coping mechanism? Do I need therapy? I have no answers to any of these questions. 
> 
> What I do have is a torturous abundance of emotions about Bioware games.
> 
> I tried my level best to make the Inquisitor as ambiguous as possible in both race and gender without making them a robot. I really wanted this to be a story about Varric and Hawke, and I felt like the best way to do that was to draw as little attention to the Inky as I physically could. I gotta tell you, I rely on pronouns way more than I previously realized. 
> 
> Comments get me out of bed in the morning, even tiny ones that consist of only emojis. Thank you for reading; let me know what you think!
> 
> (curiositykilledthecas.tumblr.com)  
Happy 5th birthday, Inquisition!


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